James Van Trump Database Project

What is the James Van Trump Database Project?

This interactive project allows users to delve into the mind of one of Pittsburgh’s most influential architectural historians, James D. Van Trump. He was a fascinating man of many talents. Anyone who is interested in Western Pennsylvania architectural history or who simply loves Pittsburgh can benefit from understanding more about his research process.

This project brings together two elements: a published book of essays, and a database built with scanned images of a collection of Jamie’s note cards.

Life and Architecturein Pittsburgh, by James D. Van Trump

A premier collection of essays, poems and thoughts on Pittsburgh architecture and life in the steel city, Van Trump discusses formal scholarly topics, snippets of every day life and thoughts on the urban landscape of the city he loved. In order to download and read the book, navigate to the page called “Life and Architecture in Pittsburgh” and click the link to access the stored file. The file is in .PDF format and is fully searchable by keywords.

James Van Trump Notecard Database

The heart of this project is the keyword-searchable database of Jamie’s notes. The topics range from architectural history to art to anything to do with Pittsburgh. To access this database, click on the “Note Card Database” page heading and click the link. It will take you to a web-published version of the FileMaker Pro database.